Part 1 - Valentino, 'El Vasco', and the Tango in Paris
From 'Vanity Fair' Magazine of February 1923, the Valentinos as they appeared on their national dance tour to promote Mineralava cosmetics.
When dancer Roberto 'El Aleman' Tonet claimed that fellow tangueros had dubbed the stiff-armed tango seen in countless films and stage plays 'dancing a la Valentino,' it's likely he had never actually seen 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921), the film that had vaulted Rudolph Valentino to international fame seven decades earlier. True, many Hollywood dancers had performed travesties of the dance - even the great Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, in The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (1939). With the film out of general circulation, and the few descriptions of the 4 Horsemen tango in Argentinian sources being scant or inaccurate (one prominent history even confused it with Douglas Fairbanks' seriocomic tango in The Gaucho (1927)), it might have been easy to assume that Valentino followed suit.
Like Tonet, some theorists have dismissed Valentino's 4 Horsemen tango as a Hollywood confection. Others, including Sergio Pujol and Pedro Ochoa, have argued that Valentino's tango is not only a valuable record of an art form in transition, but more authentic to the Argentinian style than is sometimes acknowledged. Who is correct?
One way of tackling the question is to ask another: how did Valentino first come to learn the tango, and from whom? What influences did they bring to bear? The explanation given by Valentino himself is repeated in most biographies: upon arriving at New York in late 1913, he befriended two Austrian noblemen, Otto and Alex Salm, and their French friend George Ragni, and persuaded them to teach him the dance - an education which, in part, supposedly took place outside the monkey enclosure at the Bronx Zoo.
Like Tonet, some theorists have dismissed Valentino's 4 Horsemen tango as a Hollywood confection. Others, including Sergio Pujol and Pedro Ochoa, have argued that Valentino's tango is not only a valuable record of an art form in transition, but more authentic to the Argentinian style than is sometimes acknowledged. Who is correct?
One way of tackling the question is to ask another: how did Valentino first come to learn the tango, and from whom? What influences did they bring to bear? The explanation given by Valentino himself is repeated in most biographies: upon arriving at New York in late 1913, he befriended two Austrian noblemen, Otto and Alex Salm, and their French friend George Ragni, and persuaded them to teach him the dance - an education which, in part, supposedly took place outside the monkey enclosure at the Bronx Zoo.
Advertisement for Don Leno in Theatre Magazine, 1914. Leno also claimed to have taught Valentino's good friend, Mae Murray.
Other candidates have sometimes been suggested, up to and including the venerable Vaslav Nijinsky, star of the Ballets Russes. Valentino himself made this claim in a questionnaire posed by a fan magazine; despite its entirely fanciful nature, it was taken as fact in Ken Russell's 1977 biopic, but can be safely discounted as a serious option. If Valentino met Nijinsky at all, it was probably during the latter's 1916 tour of America, when Valentino had already been dancing tango professionally for some time.
A more credible option is Broadway dance teacher Don Leno, who claimed to have documentary evidence of Valentino's attendance at his classes, and to have helped him during his early years in New York. It is most likely, however, that Valentino finessed his technique with Leno after he had already become a professional dancer. At this point, Leno specialised in two areas that would have been of particular interest: instructing dancers who themselves wished to teach, and preparing students for stage and screen work.
It is another theory, not often discussed in English-language sources, which remains the most tantalising. Could Valentino have learned tango from the very top - from one of the greatest of all Argentinian tangueros?
This idea was first proposed by Argentinian lyricist Enrique Cadicamo, and repeated by dance historian Carlos G. Groppa. As Cadicamo recalled, tango musicians Celestino Ferrer and Carlos Filipotto travelled to New York with none other than Casimiro Aín, better known as 'El Vasco' - one of the most celebrated members of the guarda vieja, or first generation of professional Argentinian tango dancers. According to Cadicamo, the three men roomed with a penniless young emigré they dubbed 'El Tano' (slang for an Italian immigrant). Years passed before they realised that 'El Tano' became Rudolph Valentino, his rise to fame fuelled by the very dance they had taught him.
A more credible option is Broadway dance teacher Don Leno, who claimed to have documentary evidence of Valentino's attendance at his classes, and to have helped him during his early years in New York. It is most likely, however, that Valentino finessed his technique with Leno after he had already become a professional dancer. At this point, Leno specialised in two areas that would have been of particular interest: instructing dancers who themselves wished to teach, and preparing students for stage and screen work.
It is another theory, not often discussed in English-language sources, which remains the most tantalising. Could Valentino have learned tango from the very top - from one of the greatest of all Argentinian tangueros?
This idea was first proposed by Argentinian lyricist Enrique Cadicamo, and repeated by dance historian Carlos G. Groppa. As Cadicamo recalled, tango musicians Celestino Ferrer and Carlos Filipotto travelled to New York with none other than Casimiro Aín, better known as 'El Vasco' - one of the most celebrated members of the guarda vieja, or first generation of professional Argentinian tango dancers. According to Cadicamo, the three men roomed with a penniless young emigré they dubbed 'El Tano' (slang for an Italian immigrant). Years passed before they realised that 'El Tano' became Rudolph Valentino, his rise to fame fuelled by the very dance they had taught him.
On the face of it, the contention might be easily dismissed. Filipotto and Ferrer did travel to New York - but not until 15 January 1915, and without Aín, who arrived in October that year, by which time Valentino was already dancing professionally. And yet, the idea that Casimiro Aín played some part in his professional development gains more credence the more it is examined.
For one thing, 1915 was not the first time Aín had visited New York. He and his orquestra tipica had first travelled there from Paris in November 1913, about a month before Valentino made the same journey. Celestino Ferrer was among the passengers, though not Filipotto, who would join the orquestra later, as a replacement for bandoneon player Vicente Loduca. At a distance of many decades, it might have been easy for Cadicamo to confuse the two men, and the two journeys.
Variety's obituary for Aín specifically noted that he had 'taught the Argentine tango to Lady Astor and Rudolph Valentino,' while Valentino's close friend and business manager, George Ullman, credited unnamed 'South American friends' with instructing him in the dance, also implying that this occurred not at New York but Paris, where Valentino had spent most of 1913.
For one thing, 1915 was not the first time Aín had visited New York. He and his orquestra tipica had first travelled there from Paris in November 1913, about a month before Valentino made the same journey. Celestino Ferrer was among the passengers, though not Filipotto, who would join the orquestra later, as a replacement for bandoneon player Vicente Loduca. At a distance of many decades, it might have been easy for Cadicamo to confuse the two men, and the two journeys.
Variety's obituary for Aín specifically noted that he had 'taught the Argentine tango to Lady Astor and Rudolph Valentino,' while Valentino's close friend and business manager, George Ullman, credited unnamed 'South American friends' with instructing him in the dance, also implying that this occurred not at New York but Paris, where Valentino had spent most of 1913.
'El Vasco' of the Guarda Vieja
Casimiro 'El Vasco' Aín in 1920.
Casimiro Aín was born on 4 March 1882 in La Piedad, Buenos Aires, the son of a French Basque father and an Italian mother. His father was a dairyman, and initially it seemed he would follow him into this field, until the melodies of the Italian organ grinders - a common sight and sound at the turn of the century - tempted him down a different path. Soon, he was dancing the polyglot dance known as the tango - a veritable melting pot of African dance rhythms, the Brazilian maxixe, the Cuban habanera, and countless other influences. It was his old profession that earned him the first of his nicknames, 'La Lecherita' ('The Milkman'), but he soon became better known under a second, 'El Vasco' ('The Basque'). Wiry, dark, and rather small in stature (different documents give his height as anything between 5' 4" and 5' 10'), he did not share Valentino's preternatural good looks, but seems to have shared his appeal to women.
One of the earliest known visual records of the tango criollo, from 1903. It was common - and considered macho rather than homoerotic - for men to dance with one another. It is interesting to note that the taller man was an actor, Arturo de Nava, posing as an idle farmhand. Even at this early stage, establishing notions of 'authenticity' becomes a challenge.
It is difficult to disentangle the truth of his early career from his myth-making - he claimed to have made several trips around Europe between 1903 and 1907 - but he had evidently been a professional dancer for some time when he married his dancing partner, Martina, in 1908 and performed as part of Argentina's Centennial celebrations in 1910. First and foremost, he was an exhibition dancer, excelling in genteel forms such as the polka, mazurka and waltz. As he explained, tango took some time to make its way from the rough taverns of La Boca into polite society. He would later claim a large share of the credit for this transition.
By common consent, the two greatest dancers of the guarda vieja were 'El Vasco' and 'El Cachafaz' ('The Scoundrel'), José Benito Bianquet. Like his rival, El Cachafaz had humble origins. He too had first learned to dance to Italian barrel organs, and moved from dancing in taverns to honing his technique at the most chic nightclubs of the capital. Both men would ultimately set their sights on Europe, but here they differed: while El Vasco became more famous abroad, El Cachafaz became a legend at home. Both specialised in a muscular, unadorned style of tango broadly referred to as tango criollo, favouring brisk, compact steps and a slightly crouched posture, which would live into the 1920s and beyond as the suave canyengue.
By common consent, the two greatest dancers of the guarda vieja were 'El Vasco' and 'El Cachafaz' ('The Scoundrel'), José Benito Bianquet. Like his rival, El Cachafaz had humble origins. He too had first learned to dance to Italian barrel organs, and moved from dancing in taverns to honing his technique at the most chic nightclubs of the capital. Both men would ultimately set their sights on Europe, but here they differed: while El Vasco became more famous abroad, El Cachafaz became a legend at home. Both specialised in a muscular, unadorned style of tango broadly referred to as tango criollo, favouring brisk, compact steps and a slightly crouched posture, which would live into the 1920s and beyond as the suave canyengue.
The Tango Comes to Paris
A French publication hypes 'Le Tango' in mid 1913. Note the similarity of the dancers' costumes to those seen in the French tango sequences of '4 Horsemen'.
Tangueros had been coming to Paris since at least 1907, but it was not until late 1911 that tango fever truly began to grip the capital. The triumph of Serge Diaghliev's Ballets Russes had created an appetite for exotica that was amply fed by an obscure, rather disreputable dance from the barrios of Buenos Aires. Those who had actually learned in Argentina obtained a special cachet. Soon, Argentinians dancers and musicians were flooding Paris, eager to cash in.
‘The fashion had brought over professors from the other side of the sea, compatriots from the slums of Buenos Aires, haughty and confused at being applauded like famous lecturers or tenors,' wrote Vincente Blasco Ibáñez in 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Some were ambitious amateurs - but others were amongst Argentina's finest dancers. Who better to capitalise on the craze than 'El Vasco', conversant in French, Italian and Spanish, and hungry for fame?
Argentinian composer Alberto López Buchardo financed a passage to Paris for 'El Vasco' and his orquestra tipica - bandoneonist Vincente Loduca, violinist Eduardo Monelos, and pianist Celestino Ferrer. The group arrived in April 1913, quickly progressing from busking in the streets of Montmartre to playing the Princesse, a cabaret that would later become the unofficial headquarters of the tango in Paris, the legendary El Garrón.
‘The fashion had brought over professors from the other side of the sea, compatriots from the slums of Buenos Aires, haughty and confused at being applauded like famous lecturers or tenors,' wrote Vincente Blasco Ibáñez in 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Some were ambitious amateurs - but others were amongst Argentina's finest dancers. Who better to capitalise on the craze than 'El Vasco', conversant in French, Italian and Spanish, and hungry for fame?
Argentinian composer Alberto López Buchardo financed a passage to Paris for 'El Vasco' and his orquestra tipica - bandoneonist Vincente Loduca, violinist Eduardo Monelos, and pianist Celestino Ferrer. The group arrived in April 1913, quickly progressing from busking in the streets of Montmartre to playing the Princesse, a cabaret that would later become the unofficial headquarters of the tango in Paris, the legendary El Garrón.
An early postcard illustrating the dainty, chaste salon-style tango that evolved in Paris.
Tango underwent an irreversible evolution during its time in Paris. It was no longer the raw, rhythmic battle of wits and machismo of Buenos Aires - a dance still considered so distasteful as to be banned at the Argentine Embassy in Paris at the same time it was being celebrated in the city's most fashionable clubs. It was a smoother, simpler version which came to be known as 'tango de salon,' complete with a new lexicon of moves, new costumes, and a new sense of propriety. Under the French, tango was no longer a dance of the underworld, but one fit to be enjoyed by high society.
After 1913, the tango would never be quite the same. As always, the dance was a polyglot, pollinating and cross-pollinating with other styles. Professional tangueros such as Aín were expected to be as proficient at the French variant as the tango criollo they had danced in their youth. They could not help but bring this influence back to their homeland, inspiring some Argentinians to complain that their dance was now a compromised 'tango a la francesca.'
Thus began a vexed debate over authenticity that continues to this day. What is a 'true' Argentine tango?
After 1913, the tango would never be quite the same. As always, the dance was a polyglot, pollinating and cross-pollinating with other styles. Professional tangueros such as Aín were expected to be as proficient at the French variant as the tango criollo they had danced in their youth. They could not help but bring this influence back to their homeland, inspiring some Argentinians to complain that their dance was now a compromised 'tango a la francesca.'
Thus began a vexed debate over authenticity that continues to this day. What is a 'true' Argentine tango?
Valentino In Paris
An early image of El Garròn from around 1920, soon after its transformation from the Princesse.
Valentino always remained evasive about his time in Paris, but to think that he did not encounter the tango there is to suggest that a teenager of 1964 might not have heard of the Beatles. It was not for nothing that author H.G. Wells branded 1913 'The Year of the Tango'. Aside from making his first tentative attempts at the dance, the young Valentino might have seen it performed at any number of venues - perhaps the Café de Paris, where an American-born dancer of European heritage named Maurice Mouvet had learned it from some visiting Argentinians, and would later claim to be the first to dance it professionally in Paris. Mouvet became a key figure in the development of the tango in America, where he would foster the career of Valentino's future dance partner, Joan Sawyer.
Interestingly, there is much evidence that Valentino and Maurice knew one another. Several of Valentino's friends, including socialite Dickie Warner and the director Robert Florey, maintained that Valentino had made an early screen appearance as an extra in Mouvet's now-lost film The Quest of Life (1916). Photos also exist of Mouvet visiting the set of Valentino's film Blood and Sand (1922). However, given Mouvet's movements during this period, is more likely that this acquaintance began when both were in New York as professional dancers working the same turf.
Valentino might well have seen Casimiro Aín and his current dance partner, Jasmine, at the Princesse - perhaps even met him. Aside from George Ullman's comment, it is impossible to confirm whether he mingled with the Argentinians who were temporarily making Paris home, though the fact that many shared his Italian heritage and could speak the language makes it a possibility.
Fellow passengers aboard his ship to New York confirm that Valentino was already an adept dancer by the time he left Paris. One way or another, the tango had already made its first impression upon the young man.
Interestingly, there is much evidence that Valentino and Maurice knew one another. Several of Valentino's friends, including socialite Dickie Warner and the director Robert Florey, maintained that Valentino had made an early screen appearance as an extra in Mouvet's now-lost film The Quest of Life (1916). Photos also exist of Mouvet visiting the set of Valentino's film Blood and Sand (1922). However, given Mouvet's movements during this period, is more likely that this acquaintance began when both were in New York as professional dancers working the same turf.
Valentino might well have seen Casimiro Aín and his current dance partner, Jasmine, at the Princesse - perhaps even met him. Aside from George Ullman's comment, it is impossible to confirm whether he mingled with the Argentinians who were temporarily making Paris home, though the fact that many shared his Italian heritage and could speak the language makes it a possibility.
Fellow passengers aboard his ship to New York confirm that Valentino was already an adept dancer by the time he left Paris. One way or another, the tango had already made its first impression upon the young man.
The former Minnie Ashley, Mrs William Astor Chanler, who brought Casimiro Aín to New York.
Amongst those who definitely did see Aín was a wealthy, artistic American known as Mrs William Astor Chanler. In the 1890s, she had been a well known Broadway actress, Beatrice 'Minnie' Ashley. Though famously wooed by William Randolph Hearst, she instead married William Astor Chanler, a career soldier. His taste for joining revolutionaries on the field of battle led to a reluctant separation, though they never officially divorced, and remained close. She now divided her time between New York and Paris, where he lived, in order to remain in touch with him. She soon urged Aín and his company to travel to America, telling the media that she hoped they would 'show New Yorkers what the real dance is like.'
This, then, was probably the 'Lady Astor' mentioned in Aín's obituary. She was related by marriage to the Astors (her husband was a grand-nephew to John Jacob Astor III), but she was not a member of the nobility. Another possibility is Helen Astor, wife of Vincent Astor and daughter-in-law of John Jacob Astor IV, both of whom regularly attended Aín's New York soirées. Either way, this suggests that whatever embroideries Aín performed on his recollections, they contained a kernel of truth.
By the end of 1913, both 'El Vasco' and young Rudolph Guglielmi, as he was then known, were destined for new horizons. The tango was coming to New York.
This, then, was probably the 'Lady Astor' mentioned in Aín's obituary. She was related by marriage to the Astors (her husband was a grand-nephew to John Jacob Astor III), but she was not a member of the nobility. Another possibility is Helen Astor, wife of Vincent Astor and daughter-in-law of John Jacob Astor IV, both of whom regularly attended Aín's New York soirées. Either way, this suggests that whatever embroideries Aín performed on his recollections, they contained a kernel of truth.
By the end of 1913, both 'El Vasco' and young Rudolph Guglielmi, as he was then known, were destined for new horizons. The tango was coming to New York.
